


Blue in the Moon

by discosludge



Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, Memory Loss, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-15 21:27:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29071026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/discosludge/pseuds/discosludge
Summary: When her memories begin to fade, he's there to remind her.A V who is quickly losing herself and can only hold on to the one thing that's making her slip away.
Relationships: Johnny Silverhand/Female V
Comments: 8
Kudos: 76





	1. we can be heroes

**Author's Note:**

> A post-Chippin' In exploration of Johnny and V's relationship. Will be somewhat drabble-esque, but will follow them to the end of the game and beyond.

It’s like he can feel her slipping away—the way smoke slips through the fingers when you try to grab it. Sometimes the feeling is so strong he forgets himself, does something sentimental or stupid or emotional. It pulls at his ugly heart. He’s sure she can feel it too. 

“Jesus, V,” the tone begets a casual facade. “You’re in a sorry state.” 

“Shut the fuck up, Johnny.” She bites like a tiger and she’s good at it. She’s good at faking rage, just like he was. Maybe it’s the him that's inside of her. 

Blood runs a clean, red line down dark skin, puddles in the jutting of her cupid’s bow. When she opens her mouth he can see it on her stark white teeth. 

“Just lookin’ out for ya, V.” Johnny holds his hands up in mock-surrender. 

“Your concern is noted,” the sarcasm drips from her tone on each syllable, a fake smile enunciating at the end of the sentence. Her body leans against an alley wall, any pretense of care for appearances dropped for the sake of comfort. Johnny can feel the hard, cool metal of the wall behind him, the cement beneath her boots, the stench of oily ramen wafting from one of the storefronts nearby. He hated that she loved this city so much. Hated that even he could feel that fondness in his gut. Her fault. 

“But fuck off.” V finally finishes her sentence, as if she could barely find the energy to cobble up the words. 

“Christ, V, what’s got your panties in a twist today?” He goads her so that she can rise up to meet him, so that he can see that sprinkle of red across her cheeks. 

“The dead guy in my head, if you really have to ask.” V says, dark brown eyes bloodshot from exhaustion. 

“What’d I do?” 

“I’m just tired, Johnny,” she acquiesces, any trace of anger dissipated in the night before them. “Tired of being tired.” 

There is a moment where he thinks she has more to say, but she remains quiet, closes her eyes, then leans upward, neck craning toward the bright, city sky. There is a line of muscle that he can trace from the space behind her excessively-pierced ear, gold and glittering like a pharaoh’s, all the way down her throat to her pronounced collarbone. 

“I know.” He offers plainly. There are no words to placate her. So he doesn’t. Because he knows her, and she knows him, and they know each other in the way you know yourself. Like being two halves of something whole, together but somehow impossibly apart. 

If she feels this way too she doesn’t express it to him. Sometimes he can feel a twinge of warmth from her and like a hermit on winter night he takes it greedily, holds his hands out and _feels_ it like nothing he’s ever felt before. 

Typically she saves her smiles for her friends—the blonde girl with the sad eyes and the doctor with the boxer’s arm. It’s sickly the way she feels when she thinks of them, like dripping candy. Sweet and slow and tender. Makes him wanna gag. 

But if they made her stop hurting so much it couldn’t be all bad. 

And sometimes she’ll have a smile for him. Maybe it’s something small and curled, like an inside joke only they know, but sometimes it’s warm and wide, welcoming like a shot of tequila on a cold night. 

V kicks off from the wall, her body lurching forward like an old ship setting out of harbor. She cracks her knuckles individually and Johnny winces, knowing he’ll feel that soon enough. 

“Hate when you do that shit.” He says.

V let’s out a chuckle, cocks a hand on her hip, white fingernails splayed across the yellow fabric of her jacket. “That’s why I do it.” 

When she walks away and heads back to her bike, Johnny takes a step back, lets her have a break from him for a while. He was always there, but she didn’t always have to hear him, to feel him. In truth, he needed a break too. 

She’s riding her bike through the streets, grotesque advertisements flashing by in blurs of neon and sparkle. A pretty spackle on top the festering wounds of Night City unchecked. Her memories of running through the back alleys and dives when she was younger take form in his thoughts—her big toothy grin, the bandana she used to wear, knowing which streets to avoid at which times. Even now, she was so young. 

Her voice interrupts his thoughts, “You were worried about me.” 

“Yeah.” He intones. 

There is a silent stillness in her mind that settles uncomfortably in him. Finally she speaks up again, halfway home now. “Sorry for being a bitch.” 

“Nah,” Johnny says. “I’m used to it.” 

“I’m nice to you sometimes,” V protests, that whining pitch in her voice. “Took up smoking for you, in case you forgot.” 

“That shit’ll kill you, you know.” 

She laughs, free and unfettered like she’s a girl with time. “Fuck you.” 

“Fuck you too, princess.” 

* * *

When they get home, V partakes in her usual rituals—shucks her boots off and leaves them to sit haphazardly near the doorway, slides her coat off, lets it drop to the floor off of her back. She reaches up, unleashes her mane of blue-green hair out of its ponytail. Johnny can feel it in his own fingers, soft and smooth, then a waft of her bright, peppermint shampoo hits his nose. 

“I have to shower.” She tells him. 

“Tch, telling me to make myself scarce?” Johnny quips. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.” 

V shoots him a cool look as she organizes her weapons and places them in her stash room. Each gun had its own spot, but Johnny’s gun stayed at her bedside. He pretends he doesn’t see the significance in that. She pretends too. 

“Bet you never thought you’d be here,” V says as she strips off the rest of her clothes, peels the blood-stained tank top off in one motion. “Stuck inside a woman’s body.” 

“Not beyond my boyish fantasies.” 

She laughs at that. “It’s old hat by now, I’m sure.” 

He studies her form, the taut muscles in her long legs, the softness of her stomach, the fullness of form, that stupid tattoo he had thought was so funny on her arm. “Guess so.” 

Johnny leans against the bathroom wall, eyes ahead on the mirror in front of him, as V showers. Steam rolls in the room, wafts past his vision into the living area. V always showered with the door open, something that would surely come back to bite her in the ass if anyone ever intruded. At least she had the window curtain shut. 

He decides to disappear for a moment, take his usual spot inside of V’s head. Showers were always nice, always a reprieve from the day, excepting the boiling hot water she liked to use. He was sure he’d feel that soon enough. Soft hands lather the lightly-perfumed soap against her skin and tension coils off of her in waves. It didn’t matter. No matter how hard she washed her own skin, he would always be the dirt beneath her fingernails. The grim that lurked like a thin layer over the flesh. 

“You’re being quiet tonight.” V says as she lather the shampoo into her scalp, bubbles forming and rolling off onto her freckled shoulders. 

“What do you want me to say?” Johnny’s voice cuts through the sound of the water running. “You’re doing a great job showering, V, well done.” 

“It’s me in’nit?” She asks, and her voice is barely concealing the worry behind it. “You can feel it.” 

“Feel what?” 

“When I’m forgettin’ stuff,” V’s hands drop to her sides as she stands under the shower head to rinse off. She closes her eyes, feels the water pour over her, slide down her body in rivulets. “You can feel me losing it.” 

Johnny doesn’t say anything. She knows the answer. 

“Fuck.” She says. Something pulls at his gut, makes him want to leave and never come back. But he can’t. He’ll never be able to leave. 

“Your choomba, the big guy?” Johnny says. “He was born in May.” 

V blinks her eyes open, not a care in the world that her mascara was running down her cheeks. 

“Jackie?” 

“That’s what you were forgetting,” Johnny says. “His birthday.” 

V is quiet, eyes trained downwards on the floor. She’s watching the bubbles and foam lurk at the drain, not quite popped enough to travel down it. “How do you know that?” 

“Come on, V,” he says. “You think about him all the time.” 

Her memories of him are so clear they’re almost like visions. Johnny had seen them all at this point, he was sure. When they first met, guns drawn on each other over a stupid job from that douche Kirk. When Jackie had welcomed her into his home, offered a couch and some jobs and Mama Welles’s cooking. The big bear hugs, the belly laugh, all the different ways he could find to make her laugh. 

And that bike, that bike that V took such good care of. Jackie had showed it to her, patted it on the seat, offered her a ride around Heywood. 

V turns the shower off, hands remaining wrapped around the faucets, knuckles pulled taut against her skin. She pushes off, wrings her hair out, then steps outside of the bedroom. If she had anything to say about Johnny poking around in her memories, she doesn’t bring it up, choosing the suffocating silence instead. He hated the quiet. 

She throws on an old shirt and a pair of panties, her usual bedtime attire. When she lays down, head plopped unceremoniously on her pillow, Johnny decides to appear. He takes the spot next to her, laying on his side he props his elbow on the mattress. She doesn’t look at him. 

“He told me I would like Viktor,” V says out loud, her voice loud in the tiny apartment. When Johnny doesn't respond, she continues. “That he and me and Misty could all go on one big date.” 

“Did you?” Johnny asks. 

“No,” V lets out a chuckle. “Can’t remember why.” 

“You told him you didn’t go for older guys.” 

V turns her head to look at him, hair splayed on the pillow, eyes heavy with tiredness. “You know my memories better than me now.” 

He can feel her sadness, feel the empty despair of knowing that you were losing yourself. It’s a painful thing, heavy and hard, that sinks in his chest. Johnny reaches out, doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing, but it doesn’t matter. He picks up a lock of her hair off the pillow, runs a metal thumb against the bright strands. It all felt so real, he can even feel the water from the shower on his finger. 

“Was it true?” He asks, letting the hair fall through his fingers. 

If V is phased by this, she doesn’t show it, just stares at him through sleep-addled eyes. “Was what true?” 

“You don’t go for older guys?” 

She rolls her eyes at him. “Perv.” 

“Go to sleep, V,” Johnny says, appearing now cross-legged at the foot of her bed. “We can discuss the finer details of my depravity in the morning.” 

He can still feel the simmering pain in her heart, a pinch in her chest that just wouldn’t go away. But it dulls now, lessened by his stupid jokes. She made him un-selfish like that, forced him to be the caretaker that he never could have been in his past life. Part of it makes him mad, like he’s going soft. But it was her, really. She was soft—her body, her hair, her heart. She acted hard, sure, and he’s sure that it was some of his influence. 

But she gave so much grace, let that Takemura into her life and into her heart. Forgave Johnny even when he was at his most incorrigible. Hell, she didn’t even care about Yorinobu or Adam Smasher, or any of those ‘Saka scum all that much. V just wanted to live, to be with her little street family, to take care of those that take care of her. In the end, she was soft. 

Johnny’s thoughts are interrupted when V falls asleep, both of them now lost to the waking world until the morning. There was peace in that, at least. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am trapped by this pairing--they will not escape my brain. I had to write about them.


	2. just for one day

V likes Kerry. Johnny can tell by the way her stomach drops a few minutes after she sees him. It makes sense—Kerry always had a way about him. He was sharp and jagged and bright in a way that made people want to look and touch. V was no exception, her heart warm and her stomach full of butterflies. 

Of course, it kind of makes Johnny sick. 

He watches her fumble their first meeting surely not helped by the relic-comedown she was experiencing. She makes a dumb joke that makes him gag, but makes Kerry laugh. Maybe things had changed drastically in the last fifty years, but more likely Kerry had just gotten really good at fake-laughing. 

They sit on the cough together, unbeknownst to Kerry that it’s all three of them. V ignores Johnny for the most part, her elbow which rests on the back of the couch nearly touches his head. He could poke her, try and throw her off. It would be funny, but probably not worth it to make her mad. 

“So,” Kerry starts. “Do you guys talk?” 

V’s eyes flicker over to Johnny on the couch and meet his briefly. Something like a smirk poses on her full lips and it’s a pretty sight. “Yeah. We chat.” 

“What do you talk about?” If Kerry notices the strangeness of V’s behavior, he doesn’t indicate it. 

“Everything,” V explains, her eyes moving back toward Kerry. “And nothing. I don’t know, he’s in my head. He’s got something for everything.” 

“Everything?” Kerry repeats.

“Yup.” V picks at a thread on her pants. 

Kerry scoffs. “Shit, sorry.” 

V takes a moment, her long fingers lingering on the thread she twirls between them. Johnny can feel something—a simmering warmth that bubbles up from her chest. Was she doing it on purpose to mess with him? To make him uncomfortable? 

“It’s ok,” V responds. “It was weird at first, like havin’ another personality. But now it just feels…normal. Like it would be weird to not have him around.” 

She knows he can hear them, knows that he can feel her sentimentality. So why is she saying this to Kerry? 

“Shit's kinda weird,” Kerry says none-too-delicately. “If you don’t mind my sayin’.” 

“It is,” V eyes are trained on the man across from her, not a glance to spare for Johnny who was still sitting next to her. “But he’s helped me. I owe him this much at least.” 

She had expressed this sentiment before—this idea that Johnny was the man who saved her life. That somehow he saved her once, twice, again and again. 

Johnny doesn’t know how to feel about that, doesn’t know what right he really has to claim he had saved her. She didn’t owe him anything. He had used her, selfishly, in his pursuit of a life he could never live again, and she had warned him that he wouldn’t get another chance with her. Maybe they were both naive to believe he could be better for her, but he hadn’t fucked it up again so far. 

They’re talking about the show while Johnny is lost in his own thoughts, talking about finding Nancy and Denny and Henry. An unsettled feeling simmers in her gut, Johnny can feel it overtaking any other feeling. 

When the plans are laid out and Nancy's assistant lets them know that Nancy was at the Totentanz, V offers a pleasant enough goodbye to Kerry, promising him that she would be in touch. 

“You let me know if you need anything, V, alright?” Kerry hollers out to her when she’s halfway out the door. V smiles to herself, offers a wave without looking back, and heads out toward her bike. 

“You like him,” Johnny pesters her, just because he can. “Don’t you?” 

V frowns at this, the little dimples of her cheeks curling with it. “I like a lot of people, Johnny.” 

He scoffs. “Yeah, tell me about it. I’m the one whose gotta feel it all the time.” 

It was true that V gave her affections easily, lended her heart out often to those that she felt close to. There was her chooms, Jackie, Misty, Viktor. Then there was those who were more recent, deeper than any friendly type of love—Judy and Panam. Takemura and the way he and her had shared takeout on the roof of that building. That cop, River. Johnny lets out an involuntary shiver. 

All this love and none for him. 

He doesn’t really know where the thought comes from, what deep recesses it had bubbled up to form in his computer-generated psyche. She was a beautiful woman, had a fine way about her with her smile and her laugh. If he had met her at a bar or a gig he would have remembered her, invited her back to his room. She would have definitely said no. 

He couldn’t really think about these things too much. Didn’t want to think about the implication his brain was trying to chip away at to get to the truth. 

“Maybe I like Kerry because you and him were close.” V’s voice interrupts his thoughts. 

“How do you mean?” Johnny asks her, only tepidly interested in whatever she was kicking around up in that busted brain of her’s. 

“I felt your affection for him,” she says, and Johnny fakes a gag at that. “Your friendship.” 

“Nah, you got it all wrong,” Johnny holds his hands out, knows she can’t see them in her head anyways. “Me and Kerry were always at each other’s throats.” 

V chuckles at that, swings her leg over her bike. “Yeah, never met two people who bickered and argued and were still friends.” 

Johnny lets it sit, realizes what she’s saying. “Don’t get all sappy on me here, merc. I chose to hang with Kerry. I’m stuck with you.” 

She laughs at him, a bright ringing thing in the warm, night air. And before he can think of something, anything to poke and prod her with, she shoots off on her bike. 

The air whips past them, the sound a cool rush in V’s ears. Johnny gets why she prefers the bike, understands the appeal of being open to the air and sky above you as you whizzed by faster than anyone else around you. 

The journey from North Oak back to V’s place is long, and Johnny is surprised when instead of heading to her apartment she is choosing instead to go to the Coyote Cojo. 

“Change of plans?” Johnny asks inside her head. 

V speak to him through the wind, her voice clear and un-hurried in her own mind. “I forgot I told Mama Welles I would eat dinner with her tonight. I know it’s late, but she might still be up.” 

Johnny is quiet for a moment, unsure if he should say anything. It would probably be better in the long run, less embarrassing for V if he just said it now. 

“You had dinner with her last night, V,” Johnny says to her. “You told her you were coming again next week.” 

V is quiet for a moment as she slows on her bike, the wind slowing in her ears, the deep night sky illuminated by the neon lights. She pulls up to the curb, lets the kickstand scratch the pavement and leans forward, a blank stare in her eyes. It was like she was trying to remember something, and Johnny can feel her reaching and reaching, fingers just barely brushing the memory. 

“You’re right.” She says it out loud now, talking to herself. 

Johnny sighs, deep and and tired, like an old boat pulling out to shore. “Sorry, V.” 

She doesn’t respond to his apology, eyes still staring blankly ahead. Her arms cross against the handlebars of her bike, leaned forward like she’s posing for an ad or something.

“Thanks,” she says to him, leaning back once more and placing her legs on the ground. She kicks the kickstand back up and rolls her neck. He’ll feel the crack of bone and creak of muscle in a few minutes, he knows. “We should get home.” 

* * *

V is quiet when they get back to her apartment, forgoing her usual nightly ritual to instead shirk off her clothing and plop down unceremoniously on her couch, knees pulled up tightly to her chin. She looks so small, he can’t believe she’s the person she was a few hours ago, running and gunning down those Tyger Claws this afternoon. And now she was small and sad, bone-deep tired. 

He appears sitting next to her, leans his head back on the couch, can feel the cushion dig into the back of his neck. It was getting stronger now, the effect the world had on him, the way he could feel the things he touched. 

It was scary to her, he was sure. 

“Talk to me, V.” He says, hoping for something, anything. 

Her dark eyes flicker over to him briefly before focusing again on the door of her apartment. “I hate this shit.” 

“Yeah,” Johnny sighs. “Me too.” 

She is quiet for a few moments too long, and before Johnny can check to make sure if she’s ok, he feels a pressure on his shoulder. He looks down to see V resting on his shoulder, her round cheek pressed up against the bare skin of his shoulder. It feels so real, so _tangible_ he almost can’t believe that he’s awake and aware right now. 

“Do you know my mom’s name?” She asks him suddenly, voice quiet. 

“This a trick question?” Johnny responds as he takes his sunglasses off. It felt pointless to have them on. 

“It was Valerie,” V says. “She named me after her. Bitch.” 

He chuckles at that, and when she laughs with him he can feel her breath on his arm, the gentle shake of her shoulders. 

“My first name isn’t John,” he says. “John’s my middle name.”

V leans up, her absence leaving his shoulder cold again. She looks at him with comically wide eyes, the dimples on her cheeks reappearing with a sly smile. “For real? What’s your first name?” 

“Agh,” Johnny shakes his head. “Shouldn’t of told you that.” 

“Bill?” 

“No,” he says. “Fuck’s sake, I look like a ‘Bill’ to you?” 

“I could see ‘William’,” V teases. “They could call you Willie.” 

“Fuck off.” 

“No for real!” V’s smile widens. “You gotta tell me now.” 

“Don’t gotta do shit, _Valerie._ ” 

She grimaces at him. “Ugh. It’s just V, to you.” 

He smirks at her evilly. “Then it’s just Johnny, to you.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't mind me, just projecting all my video game crushes onto my V.


	3. you can be mean

When he looks at V across the dank and dirty dive bar toilet, he sure wasn’t expecting her to be looking at him like that. She holds her palm close up to her chest, the tiny pill sitting in her hand. It’s not the way she stands that throws him off, it’s the look she has in her eyes. Like she’s studying him. 

“What’re you waiting for, V?” Johnny asks her impatiently, the discomfort growing the longer she stares. 

“Just wanna get one last look at you,” V says, tone betraying no emotion. “You know, just in case this pill works a little too well and erases me from existence.” 

He frowns at her. “Little late to be backing out now.” 

“I know,” V smiles at him, too many teeth to be genuine. “I’m just fuckin’ with you.” 

“Don’t particularly see the humor in it, V,” Johnny tells her. “You got issues.” 

“Many of which stem from the rockerboy taking up permanent residence inside my brain, need I remind you.”

And before he can think of anything to respond with she knocks the pill back violently, her head swinging back, blue-green hair looking positively fluorescent under the bathroom lights. It’s jarring how quickly the pills work these days, how quickly he can feel himself filling in all of her limbs—her long legs and arms. 

He steps out the door, sees her looking back at him in the mirror. It’s V alright, but he can see himself too. Rogue had called it a ‘mean smirk,’ and she was right. It wasn’t V—he was too sharp inside of her. When he puts on the aviators and that replica Samurai jacket he can almost pretend that the feeling gnawing at his gut wasn’t guilt. Almost. 

* * *

The show went off without a hitch, and while it took some time for Johnny to grow accustomed to playing the guitar with long fingernails, he still managed to pull it off. They all did. There is a feeling of tentativeness when he leaves V’s body, as if she’ll be mad at him or something. He doesn’t know why he feels it, maybe it’s residual from disappointing her so often. Kerry is certainly disappointed that he isn’t talking to Johnny anymore, though he graciously accepts the guitar. And when he pats V’s shoulder as he leaves, there is comfort in the newly-formed friendship. Johnny can feel V, can feel her fondness for Kerry. 

She looks at Johnny as he leans on the bar, brown eyes tinged with something sweet. He hates when she gets like this—all sentimental and shit. 

“Hope that’s it for last requests,” she tells him. “Not sure I can handle any more.” 

Something pulls at his gut. That guilt again. “It is and I’m startin’ to regret you agreed to this concert thing.” 

She scoffs at him. “Thought you’d be more gracious. Said it was important to you, this thing with Kerry.” 

“It was. But not more important than you.” It slips out on accident, something said quickly on impulse, compounded with the relief that she had come back. 

V stares at him with wide eyes like a deer in headlights, aviators long since forgotten in her coat pocket. Here she goes again with the sentimentality. He’s praying she’ll just forget that and they can move on. He has a feeling she won’t. 

Johnny continues. “Kerry’s got his life back. Whereas we should be worryin’ about how to get yours back.” 

V smiles at him, and this time it’s small and sweet, something private just for him. He feels the fondness in her heart, the warmth pooling in her belly. He shouldn’t have said that. 

“You’re right,” she says as she slides off the leather bar stool. “Let’s go.” 

He disappears back into her brain as she weaves through the crowd at the bar. She was a tall woman, almost his height when she wore her heels. It wasn’t just the height that made her stand out in a crowd, though. V had a way about her, the stride of a merc, the confidence of a women who knew she was wanted. In more ways than one, he supposes as he catches a few appreciative glances sent their way. 

Some gonk stumbles up against her just as she steps out the back door of the bar. Johnny can’t smell his breath yet, but he’s sure it reeks of booze. V looks down at the man, a furrow in her brow, a frown on her lips. He smiles at her. 

“V?” He asks, expecting her to know who he is. “It’s me, Pedro.” 

“Pedro?” She asks him incredulously. “I don’t know any Pedros.” 

“Nah,” he’s standing close to her. Too close. “We ran the streets together when we were little, remember? Padre used to give us bonuses if we did things quiet enough. Like little rats in the vent, he used to say.” 

It was just vague enough that it could have been bought by anybody. V was well known enough by this point that most folks who would frequent a place like this would be able to place her face as the famous merc. Johnny’s not buying whatever this guy’s selling, but he can feel the trepidation in V’s heart. She’s considering him. 

_“You don’t know him, V,”_ Johnny’s voice comes from somewhere inside her mind. _“He wants something from you, and something’s tellin’ me you don’t want that from him.”_

_“You always go to the worst places,”_ V speaks to him in her head, her voice a little frazzled. _“How do I know?”_

_“What do you mean?”_ Johnny asks. 

“V?” This so-called Pedro interrupts their inner mind’s conversation. 

“Sorry,” V says out loud to him, all confidence that had been in her voice previously now fading in the night before them. “I’m just confused.” 

“‘Course you are. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you,” Pedro says. “Can’t believe it’s really you.” 

_“He could be telling the truth.”_ V says to Johnny. 

_“He’s not. He’s trying to get in your pants.”_ He replies. 

_“I’m losing my mind, Johnny,”_ she says, her voice quavering on the last syllable. _“I don’t even know what’s real anymore.”_

_“V,”_ he says. _“I’m real. And I’m telling you this guy is lying to you.”_

The irony of it being that Johnny wasn’t really real at all, just conjured in Alt’s last, unintentional revenge against him. But he was real enough to her, real enough that he knew her memories. Real enough to help her be present. 

“I’m sorry,” V says. “I’m gonna have to ask you to take three, big fucking steps away from me.” 

‘Pedro’ looks like he’s just been slapped and it gives Johnny some grim satisfaction to see the little creep scared. It gives him even more satisfaction that the fear is stemming from V, the mere presence of the woman reducing whatever confidence this man had to rubble. It made Johnny proud, in a sick kind of way. 

“Whoa, whoa,” Pedro holds his hands up. “What did I do?” 

“I don’t know you,” V takes a step closer to him, the high heel of her boot clacking onto wet pavement with a loud sound. “I don’t want to know you. I requested something of you, and you still haven’t moved an inch.” 

Pedro steps back once. “C’mon V, we know each other. Remember Padre?” 

V steps closer once more. “Padre? You have to be fucking stupid if you think that name-dropping Padre means dick to me.” 

He steps back again. “Chill, choom. I just thought maybe you’d wanna hang after that set.” 

“I’m not your choom,” V is towering over him now. If Johnny had popcorn right now he’d be eating it faster and faster. “You thought you’d get into my good graces and by extension my pants by lying to me?” 

“I—“ 

“You didn’t think, dipshit,” V slams her heel into the toe of his boot, the thin material letting her feel the squelch of his big toe beneath her heel. Pedro screams, his voice lost in the cacophony of Night City’s streets. Johnny feels the grim satisfaction that V feels, the cool anger that simmers right beneath her skin. It’s so cold it’s hot, burns him to the touch. “And I asked for three steps.” 

Pedro squeals away, grasping his boot and hopping along on one foot, crying to anyone that will listen about that ‘crazy bitch’. V smiles after him, the streetlights reflecting against the Kiroshi optics in her eyes. 

“Goddamn V,” Johnny says as he appears next to her, leaned up against a post. “Ever thought about a career in being a dominatrix? You’d be up to your tits in eddies.” 

She smiles at him, a coy thing. “Wouldn’t even need to worry about these petty merc problems anymore, huh?” 

“Petty like stealing from Saburo Arasaka petty? Or petty like helpin’ a buncha talking cabs find their way home to daddy petty?” 

V stares at him, rolls her eyes. “Touché.” 

She is silent then, for a long time looking at the road ahead of her. Red gleams against the wet pavement, lights reflecting dimly on the streets. He wonders what she’s thinking, if she would let him in to parse her thoughts out. Sometimes he wonders if she can block him out without the pills, if she would choose to. The feeling of being locked away was uncomfortable for him, like being put in a dark room with the door closed. It didn’t scare him, it just made him think too hard. Made him think about her and her life. This precious thing she was squandering away so that he could play his guitar again. 

“Thanks Johnny.” V says quietly, finally. He looks at her, the serene grace that matches her face is so at odds with what she had just done to that man it almost makes him laugh. 

“For what?” He asks. 

“For helping me remember,” V answers him. “I know it’s not getting any easier, havin’ to help me all the time.” 

Johnny looks at her, takes in her features. Someday they’d separate, be far away from one another. The idea of being without her stung in a way he would have never expected all those days ago. She had wormed her way into his heart, nestled a comfortable spot for herself right next to his soul. Whatever was left of his soul. 

Maybe he loved her. It didn’t really matter. 

“Yeah,” Johnny says. “My pleasure. It was worth it to see you rip that gonk a new one.” 

She hums in response to that, quiet and contemplative. 

“Besides,” Johnny offers again. “What’re brain parasites for?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had to include the actual dialogue from the mission because when Johnny said that I think my heart stopped irl. 
> 
> Anyways, thanks for reading. See you soon!


	4. and I, I'll drink all the time

When the thought first crosses his mind, it makes Johnny angry and fills his belly with the kind of rage that used to occupy the space there. It happens when V is talking to Judy about something, some tech thing or another. 

She reminds him of Alt. 

Maybe she had always reminded him of Alt—her technobabble and her skill for netrunning, and the way she carried herself, like a goddamn swan among geese. The thought disturbs him more than he’s willing to admit. 

She got under his skin like Alt did too. V was always calling him out on his shit, all the dumb things he would say and do just to get a rise out of her. It hadn’t been so bad lately, but he hadn’t been antagonizing her as much either. 

“Hey, V.” He gets her attention one morning when she’s throwing on her clothes. It was a little sadistic, the way he liked to appear right in the middle of her sliding into a shirt, arms crossed and standing in front of her like some kind of inspector. 

She pulls the shirt down and untucks her hair from the inside. “Yes?” None-too-thrilled. 

“What do you think of Alt?” 

“What do I think of Alt?” V looks at him incredulously, one eyebrow cocked high on her forehead. Johnny had always liked the way her skin dimpled when she was frowning. “I don’t know, Johnny, you’re inside my head. You can probably figure it out.” 

“Yeah, but it’d be easier if you just told me.” 

“Oh, would it?” 

“Who pissed in your coffee this morning?” Johnny antagonizes her because she’s obfuscating her thoughts from him. There was no reason to shut him out now, not when there may not be all that much time left. He pushes that thought away. 

“I figured Alt would be a sore spot for you to talk about,” V says as she pulls up her jeans. He's momentarily enraptured by the way she has to jump to get into them. “Considering last time I said anything about her you told me I didn’t know ‘jack shit’.” 

Her memories of Johnny were stark and clear in comparison to every other memory—the ones of Jackie or her mother or her childhood were getting hazier and hazier. It made Johnny stick out like a sore thumb, eating away at her like a tumor. 

“Yeah well,” Johnny pushes, and why can’t he stop pushing? “You didn’t know jack shit.” 

“So why do you care what I think about Alt?” 

“Just curious.”

V sighs, pinches her thumb and finger between the bridge of her nose. He can feel her headache, the harsh pulses that start at the back of her head and wrap around toward the front. She acquiesces, once again, granting him the grace that he never deserved. 

“She deserved better,” V says quietly. It cuts him, burns like a bitch. She was so casually cruel. “You know she did, too.” 

Johnny doesn’t say anything, doesn’t know how to answer her or argue. There was no defense he could come up with, nothing that she couldn’t immediately shoot down. In another life he would fight back, would say something cruel and cutting that would humble her. What did V know anyway? What did she know about regret? 

But there was no fight in him. 

He disappears from her view, leaves her by herself in the only way that he knows how. He’s always around, of course, always seeing what she sees and smelling what she smells and hearing what she hears. But it brought her comfort to have this put-upon loneliness, this farcical serenity. 

She deserves better too, he thinks. 

* * *

A cyberpsycho who’s been jacked up beyond all belief lay at her feet, his form prone and shivering from the sensory overload that V had just enacted upon him. What she did was ugly sometimes, leaving bulky muscle-heads shivering on the floor and expert netrunners brains fried like eggs. 

It was a wonder that V had to deal with anything physically at all. Just give her a good deck and a good hiding spot and she would be in and out of a building in record time. He admired that about her, though he would never tell her that. Especially after what happened this morning. 

“Johnny?” Her voice calls out to him across her mind, and he can’t pretend he’s not relieved to hear the familiar warmth in it rather than the cold detachedness he had heard this morning. 

He materializes in front of her and the man at her feet, his boots inches away from the man’s nose. 

“Where’ve you been all day?” She asks. 

“In your head,” Johnny says. “That hot dog you ate earlier by the way is not sitting right. Gonna pay for that one later.” 

“I’m serious.” She puts a hand on her hip when she says it as if to put a point on it. 

“Me too,” Johnny clutches at his stomach dramatically. “Oof, V.” 

She frowns at him. “Is this because of what I said this morning? About Alt?”

“Whyever would you think that, V?” 

“Because you're pissin’ me off,” she says angrily. “I get that you don’t like it when people tell you the truth, but you and I both know that you should have done a lot of things differently when it came to Alt.” 

“You know, V, you talk a lot of shit about what you don’t know—“ 

“What I don’t know? Please, Johnny,” the cyberpsycho groans at her feet, but V is undeterred. “I can feel the way you feel, feel every hurt and high, and trust me when I say that I know. You treated her like a dog.” 

“I know that,” Johnny says. “Think I don’t think about that last time I saw her all the goddamn time?” 

“I know you do. I see it too,” V says, her voice deflating. “I get it.” 

“So why’re you still givin’ me shit for it?” 

“You shouldn’tve asked about her this morning,” V’s cheeks are flushed in the setting sun behind them. Waves of polluted water ache and creak against the polluted shoreline. “I don’t want to be a memory in your head that you keep goin’ back to.” 

Johnny doesn’t know how to respond to that, isn’t sure he’s supposed to know. 

V continues. “When I’m gone—“ she holds a hand up to silence Johnny’s upcoming interruption. “ _When_ I’m gone, I’m not just gonna be Johnny Silverhand’s last regret, ok? I was a person—she was a person.” 

And it comes together. It wasn’t _him_ comparing them in his head, it was V. It was V all along. When Johnny had admonished her when they went beyond the Blackwall for sounding like Alt, that thought had wiggled itself in her mind and took root there. In her head, she was always comparing herself to the other woman, wishing and praying that she wouldn’t meet a similar fate. And here she was, hurtling toward it. 

“I get it, V,” Johnny says, and he reaches out, touches her shoulder. The cotton material of her shirt feels soft against his fingertips, and her breath hitches as she looks down at his hand. “It’s not about her or me or you. No one’s gonna forget you, you know.” 

V offers him a weak smile. “You’re not gonna forget me?” 

“Nah,” he says. “Not in a million years.” 

She reaches up and places her hand over his on her shoulders. Her fingers are so warm, soaked in the sun of the day, unmarred by the ugliness of her brief encounter with the cyberpsycho. He wonders if she can feel their connection getting stronger, if she even realizes that she can touch him and feel him as if he were really there now. 

“Let’s go get something to drink,” V says casually as she removes her hand. “I gotta call Regina, then we can just get drunk and forget about all this shit from today.” 

Johnny sighs quietly, hope she doesn’t catch it. She was like him sometimes, liked to drink to stop the pain of feeling. “Yeah,” he says instead. “Could use some light refreshment.” 

V rings up Regina, flashes him a smile while she waits for the other woman to pick up. It wasn’t a good idea, to have drinks over pent-up emotions, but it was better than the alternative, which was to sit and stew together until the sun rose. If anything, at least it won’t be boring. 

* * *

She’s a flirty drunk, which tracks, because she’s flirty sober too. V smiles at the man sitting two stools down at the Coyote Cojo, eyes coy like a fox, lips turned upward in a subtle smile. Johnny wonders if the other guy has any idea who he’s eyeing up right now. If he knows that V could fry this guy’s brains in the blink of an eye. 

Pepe was more than happy to see her and serve some of his swill. Johnny doesn’t love it, but the burn is pleasant enough and whatever euphoria V is feeling now will transfer to him in a little while, however less potent. 

“So you got an output waiting for you at home?” The man asks her, his tone cloying and fake. Johnny rolls his eyes. Was that really the best this guy could do? V leans forward on her palm, ignoring the pangs of annoyance that Johnny was sending her way. 

_“He smells like cheap cologne.”_ Johnny appears on the stool sitting at her other side, his pose mocking her’s with his palm in his hand. 

_“As opposed to sweat and tequila?”_ She’s still smiling at the other man, but her words are directed to Johnny.

_“Yeah, and I’ve got a nice musk. He’s tryin’ too hard.”_

V makes a face, not realizing she was making it at the man she was speaking with initially. He frowns briefly. 

“Sorry,” V leans forward more, her pleather skirt rubbing uncomfortably against the plastic of the stool’s seat. “I actually do.” 

Johnny can practically taste the other man’s disappointment. It’s sweet—pungent. 

“Oh,” he says. “Lucky guy.” 

“Yeah you’re telling me,” V leans back a little wobbly on the barstool. “He doesn’t even pay rent.” 

“Really?” He asks, clearly seeing an opportunity to insert himself. 

“Yeah,” V says. She shoots back another shot of tequila, savors the burn against her throat. Johnny can feel it, the dizziness and desire she was feeling. It was a heady feeling, intoxicating in a way that he isn’t sure he’s ever felt in her before. “That’s ok though. He’s great in bed, and he makes me laugh. That’s all that really matters right?” 

The other man swallows. “I uh, I think I’m gonna go back to my chooms. Lemme me know if you change your mind. Or uh…yeah.” 

He slips out of the barstool, drink in hand, and scurries back to his group of chooms. V turns in her chair as she watches him leave, a sick sense of satisfaction on her features. She smiles over at Johnny, raises her glass of tequila, then shoots it down quick once more, this time finishing the glass. 

If anyone watching finds this strange, they don’t mention it to her. 

“Great in bed, huh?” Johnny says with a smirk on his face, in his voice. 

“Why would I be talking about you?” V says coyly. “You’re not my output. ‘Sides, I’ve seen no evidence of this so-called prowess.” 

“Could show you, you know.” Johnny says, close and low to her ear. 

V laughs, but it’s more like a bark. She smiles at him, dimples on her cheeks, tequila on her breath. “You wouldn’t know what to do with me, rockerboy. I’m not one of your groupies, not your favorite netrunner.” 

And it was true, he realizes. She’s not really like Alt, beyond the basics. It was unfair to compare them in his head, and even in this unfamiliar territory of V’s flirtations, he can feel the guilt he had been feeling before. Once again, it was his fault that she was thinking this, that she was feeling this. He should have never said anything about it to her. 

She wasn’t like Alt, and that wasn’t a bad thing. Not at all. 

“Nah, V,” he tells her plainly, thumbing the rim of her glass. “Never met anyone like you.” 

V smiles at him sadly. “Sorry we had to meet like this.” 

He takes the glass and brings it up to his lips, hopes he can find some semblance of normalcy in the act. But the tequila doesn’t taste like anything, and his lips are dry, his hands are empty. 

“Yeah, me too.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They were being cowards when they wouldn't let us flirt with Johnny in the game. Cowards!


End file.
